2019 Cabernet Franc Harvest

Our friends were game to come and help us with the harvesting of a small (large for us) amount of Cabernet Franc on Saturday, October 26. This decision was made largely because we saw that on Sunday, there would be a rain event that would bring between 1-3 inches of rain to our region.
So, we decided to harvest at 1:30 p.m. It turned out to be a beautiful afternoon. Our friends, Bob and Betsy who always exceed expectations came early to help us with the netting and when 1:30 came around, we began harvesting the two rows of Cabernet Franc. With 10 people, the harvest was accomplished in 45 minutes!

The harvest which was accommodated in 29 lugs was stored in our container until Monday. On Monday morning, my husband and I put the stored fruit into the half ton bin and hauled it to Jonathan Edwards Winery.

Once at the winery, Michael and Alex took over and the Cabernet Franc in the bin was weighed. Subtracting the weight of the half ton bin, we came up with 377 pounds of grapes. The next thing was to get the grapes into the destemmer/crusher. The rollers in the crusher was set so that the destemmed berries would be gently crushed.

Once again, we thank all of our friends who came to help us harvest and Michael and Alex for their help at the winery!

Tracking the 2019 Cabernet Franc Numbers

This is the first year that we will be having a good amount of Cabernet Franc to harvest. We have waited this long to harvest the grapes because of an abnormally high amount of titratable (TA) acid in our sampling.
Here is a recap of what we have been seeing:

Variety	Test Date	# of Berries	Weight	Volume of Juice	Brix	pH	TA
Cabernet Franc	9/14/2019	45	47 g	15 mL	16.5	2.68	NA
Cabernet Franc	9/30/2019	40	48 g	17 mL	20.4	2.98	9.1 g/L
Cabernet Franc	10/5/2019	40	58 g	15 mL	21.6	2.99	11.9 g/L
Cabernet Franc	10/13/2019	40	53 g	20 mL	21.4	3.09	13.3 g/L
CF Clone 214	10/20/2019	30	36 g	12.5 mL	23	3.13	11.5 g/L
CF Clone 327	10/20/2019	30	39 g	10 mL	22	3.04	11 g/L
Cabernet Franc	10/23/2019	76	86 g	35 mL	22.4	3.10	9.3 g/L

On October 20, we decided to take readings on our two clones of Cabernet Franc separately to see if they were any differences with the Brix and the titratable acids. Our readings show that they were within range of each other although clone 327 seemed to be a little behind. On October 23 when we took our last reading, we finally had a titratable acidity that we could live with.
The other experiment that my husband conducted was a paper chromatography experiment. Here, we wanted to qualitatively see what the ratio of tartaric acid to malic acid was.
Here are the results:

In paper chromatography, the compound with the lowest molecular weight will move the farthest. Therefore, in lanes 1 and 10, lactic acid is at the top of the chromatogram. Similarly in lanes 2 and 9, malic acid is in the middle of the chromatogram and in lanes 3 and 8, tartaric acid can been seen as being lower than the lactic and malic acids.
In lanes 4-7, my husband spotted the samples of interest to us. Since we know the titratable acids of our 2019 Barbera, 2018 Cabernet Franc wine, 2019 Cabernet Franc juice and 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon juice, we were interested in the qualitative comparisons as determined by the paper chromatography. The 2018 Cabernet Franc wine in lane 5 is the only lane that showed any appreciable amounts of lactic acid, indicating that the wine underwent malolactic fermentation and converted some of the malic acid to lactic acid. Comparison the Cabernet Franc juice in lane 6 to the Cabernet Sauvignon juice in lane 7, a case can be made that the Cabernet Sauvignon juice might have a bit more malic acid.
We are harvesting our Cabernet Franc today and holding off harvesting our Cabernet Sauvignon until a little later in the coming week.

Inoculating Our 2019 Chenin Blanc

Our 2019 Chenin Blanc was harvested on October 14, 2019 and the pressing occurred on October 14 and 15th. The first step that we do after pressing is a cold settling, which occurred on October 15 and 16th. On Thursday, October 17th, we headed back to Jonathan Edwards to work with winemaker, Michael Harney to rehydrate and temper our yeast, QA23. This was no easy feat to go to Jonathan Edwards Winery because the roads were made impassable by the storm that came through on Wednesday night bringing gusts in excess of 70 mph.

Once we got to the winery, Michael had already moved the cold settled wine into the tank destined for fermentation. He showed us how clear our juice already was!
We proceeded to rehydrate 300 grams of QA23 in 3 liters of water at 104 degrees F. This was done for approximately 20 minutes to allow the temperature to drop before we added some Chenin Blanc juice. We waited until the temperature approached 10 degrees of the temperature of the juice in the tank to inoculate.

The 300 gallons of Chenin Blanc juice was inoculated at noon.

Since the inoculation of the Chenin Blanc on October 17, Michael has updated us on the status of our fermentation. As of today, the Brix has come down from 21 Brix to 15.5!

Weighing In and Pressing at Jonathan Edwards

Our 2019 Chenin Blanc Harvest occurred on Monday, October 14. We had a convoy of trucks that took our harvest to Jonathan Edwards where each pallet was weighed.

Pallet Number	Gross Weight	Pallet + Lug Weight	Net Weight
1	894	146	748
2	829	151	678
3	844	154	690
4	869	154	715
5	864	147	714
6	465	85	385

The weighing and processing of the grapes happened over two days. The first three pallets were done on Monday, October 14 and then last three pallets were done the following morning on Tuesday, October 15. When all was weighed the total weight of the harvest came to 3930 pounds, just a little shy of 2 tons!
After the pallets were weighed, the whole cluster grapes went into the press that Michael had set up. What was interesting was that after one turn of the press to even out the load, many of the berries had fallen off of the rachis!

The juice just flowed from the press in no time at all!

We thank all of our friends who transported the harvest to Jonathan Edwards Winery and the crew at Jonathan Edwards for being there to help us with the weighing and pressing of our first big harvest of Chenin Blanc!

2019 Chenin Blanc Harvest

Our Chenin Blanc harvest was slated for Indigenous People's Day, October 14. We sent out an SOS to all of our friends and crossed our fingers. Early in the morning of October 14th, Mother Nature "gifted" us with a little shower. Some of our friends who could, showed up at 7:30 to help us unnet the 12 rows that we wanted to harvest. By the time 9:40 rolled around, the nets were out of the way and we were set to harvest.
Here is a picture of the crew before harvest began, including photos of harvesters who came to our Auxerrois and Chardonnay harvest:

Here is our harvest in photos:

By the time noon rolled around, all 12 rows of grapes were harvested! In our eyes, this was simply amazing! There was a little break for lunch.

Then it was back to work picking up the filled lugs and putting it on the pallets to transport the harvest to Jonathan Edwards for weighing and pressing.

A group of people who had trucks volunteered to haul the pallets for us, so a line of trucks formed to receive the shrink wrapped pallets with the precious cargo of Chenin Blanc.

As we put the pallets on the truck, the skies cleared and it became a beautiful day. Also, as the trucks left, the drivers left with them so when it came time to put the last pallet in our truck, there was just one stalwart person left to help:

Then it was time to shut the container door! Done! Boom!

We couldn't have done it without the help of everyone who came, from the early birds who put up the netting, to all the people who harvested, to the volunteers with trucks! We thank everyone for all of their efforts in bringing in our harvest!
Next blog, "Weighing In and Pressing at Jonathan Edwards".

2018 Cabernet Franc

Last night, we had one of our favorite meals, a Greek meal consisting of pastitsio and Greek Lemon Potatoes with a simple side salad. The meal was especially tasty because the day had been raw and rainy. It has been raw and rainy both Wednesday and Thursday of this week, which does not portend well for grapes still hanging on the vine, but that is another story.

We enjoyed this hearty meal and chose to pair the dinner with a 2018 Cabernet Franc. This Cabernet Franc was sparkling clear in the glass, a kind of ruby garnet in color. The aromas that came out of the glass was one of cherries and the flavor was of black bing cherries.

This wine was bottled on October 4, 2019. Originally, we noticed that it had some green notes but on this evening, we didn't taste any of the green notes and it went very well with the pastitsio! What is it? It is our 2018 Cabernet Franc!

Harvest Time in Connecticut Vineyards

Our friends came to help us harvest our Auxerrois on September 23 and then our Chardonnay on September 28, 2019. So, it was time to return the favor. During the week that we harvested our Chardonnay, we went to one of our friend's home to harvest his Chardonnay. The fruit was in beautiful condition and after the harvest, the view from his patio was one of a perfect fall day.

We also went to help harvest at another vineyard. Here is the beautiful view from the pinot gris plot.

Here are photos of the harvest. On the left are Gewurtztraminer and on the right is a bunch of Pinot Gris. I had heard of this phenomenon but never saw it. Pinot Gris is a mutant clone of Pinot Noir. Pinot Blanc is also a mutant clone of Pinot Noir. Here was this one cluster of Pinot Gris that had both dark grapes and white grapes!

Fall is a beautiful time in New England. We really enjoy being part of harvest and seeing the beautiful fruits of a season's labor.

Praying Mantis Patrol in the Vineyard

We have been seeing a lot of praying mantis in the vineyard. It's difficult to avoid seeing them because they like to hang out on our netting and we have been doing a lot of work with our netting. One day I came face to face with this:

That photo was taken on September 15, 2019 and since that time, we have been seeing many praying mantis on the netting. We wondered what was so interesting to them that they like to hang out on the netting. Then on September 23, 2019 when we did our Auxerrois harvest, we learned part of the answer.
Our friend took a video that shows the praying mantis devouring a yellow jacket!

Here is a photo of the same scene:

We really like seeing things like this that goes on in our vineyard!
More cool wild life like this one can be found under the tab labeled Vineyard Sightings.